Learning a language should be different from other types of learning. The object is to be able to communicate effectively, not to pass or fail a test, so there should no pressure for the student of languages apart from their desire to learn. This is true for all languages and especially true for a language as difficult as Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin is otherwise known as Standard Chinese and is the language of the People’s Republic of China. Mandarin has no alphabet or anything that really corresponds to one. This makes the task of learning just the basic rules of speech, incredibly hard for native English speakers.
Why are mandarin lessons important?
First, there is the business aspect. Any business person who can learn the language well enough to communicate with it effectively will have access to a market of 1.3 billion people. Also, knowing Chinese and English instantly makes any worker more marketable just based on that knowledge alone. In addition to the marketing and business aspect there is the matter of China’s growth as a world power. If this continues it is only a matter of time before Chinese culture, including the Mandarin language, will be become more more relevant in the west.
What is needed to learn Mandarin
Mandarin lessons should, ideally be administered by someone who speaks Chinese and English with equal proficiency, thus giving them insight into the difficulties faced by English speakers trying to learn the language. As with any language, another ideal circumstance is immersion. Being able to actually use the language in its native land is an important step to being fluent, or, if not fluent, at least effective. Of course, as with learning anything, the student’s greatest asset is the sheer desire to learn.
The basics of Mandarin
Mandarin lessons typically start out with the four tones of Mandarin, which is the set of intonations that govern the language. In Mandarin the tone used when a word is pronounced by the speaker is what determines the meaning of the word. That fact alone will make it difficult to grasp for most westerners. Just learning to discern the tones in ordinary everyday Chinese speech is difficult. The first of the tones is the high tone, which starts high and maintains throughout. The second is the rising tone, which starts low and goes up in pitch. The third basic tone of Mandarin Chinese starts in the middle range, rises then drops. The fourth tone falls, meaning it starts out high and then drops. The written part of Mandarin has been unchanged for 2 thousand years. The characters in Mandarin are called hanzi, and Mandarin lessons will largely involve consist of committing the 5,000 hanzi to memory. The same set of characters is used in every variant of Chinese. Originally, these characters were read from top top bottom, but in modern times they are read the same manner as English words: from left to right. They often represent physical things like pictograms. Mandarin lessons will not just consist of learning the characters’ meanings and how to say them, it will also consist of learning how to write them.